Site Navigation

Site Mobile Navigation

John Kamm's Third Way

A dozen years ago, almost no one seemed less likely to become a crusader for human rights than John Kamm. He was the president of Hong Kong's American Chamber of Commerce and a regional vice president of Occidental Chemical Corporation, a multinational company that, in addition to paying Kamm very handsomely, provided him with a luxury apartment, a Mercedes and driver, two maids, a cost-of-living allowance, private-school tuition for his sons and paid home leave. He had few reasons to rock the boat.

In May 1990, Kamm was preparing to go to Washington to testify before Congress that China's human rights record should not get in the way of granting the country Most Favored Nation trading status. This, of course, was the position of both the Chinese government and the Americans doing business in China, who desperately sought the lower tariffs that M.F.N. would provide. But since the Tiananmen Square massacre the previous year, the debate in the United States over China's trade status had grown acrimonious. The democracy protests in Tiananmen and the subsequent massacre -- hundreds killed, more than 10,000 detained or arrested in the immediate aftermath -- had turned human rights in China into a topic of discussion in living rooms across America. Many members of Congress were now groping for ways to force China to respect human rights, and M.F.N. was one of the few tools available.

A week before Kamm's trip to Washington, Zhou Nan, Beijing's senior representative in Hong Kong, held a banquet in that city to thank the American business community for its support on M.F.N. Zhou toasted Kamm, thanking him profusely, then turned to face him. As Kamm explains it today, an idea popped into his head as he was sitting there. He had read on the front page of that day's South China Morning Post about a young Hong Kong student who had been detained in Shanghai shortly after the massacre and was being tortured in prison. Kamm knew that Congress would inevitably raise Tiananmen as the main reason the country should get no favors from Washington, and he also knew that gestures by China would help ease tensions. So in the midst of his toast, Kamm said to Zhou, ''Why don't you release Yao Yongzhan?''

Zhou became immediately hostile. In front of the assembled crowd, he accused Kamm of committing an unfriendly act of gross interference in China's affairs. When Kamm left the room to use the bathroom, his fellow American businessmen apologized to Zhou.

In his youth in New Jersey, Kamm was interested in civil rights and was a passionate admirer of Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. ''But when I had to go make money, a lot of this slipped away,'' he says. Not all of it. As vice president of the Chamber of Commerce in Hong Kong when the Tiananmen Square massacre took place, Kamm narrowly managed to get a resolution through the chamber condemning the massacre, over the opposition of its bigger members.

At the end of 1990, Kamm's one-year term as president of the Chamber of Commerce ended. Six months later, his successor wrote him on chamber stationery asking him to ensure that the press did not link AmCham, as the chamber is called, to his comments on human rights. Certain companies with significant business interests in China, the letter said, were worried that AmCham might be seen as a partner in activities ''which not only exceed our charter but which, it is felt, could trigger unfortunate reactions.'' A month after that, the chamber passed a resolution that it should not be ''overtly linked/associated with'' noncommercial issues.

By that point, however, Kamm had become a man on a mission. In March 1991, he traveled to Guangzhou, the capital of China's most open province, Guangdong, and later to Beijing, carrying lists with the names of several prisoners that he had compiled from human rights groups. He called ministry officials and asked for meetings, in which he presented his lists and asked for information on the prisoners. Over the next two years, all of those on his lists were released.

Among the first to be freed, in July 1991, were the brothers Li Lin and Li Zhi, two labor advocates from Hunan. ''I had not been convinced that Yao's release was anything more than a fluke,'' Kamm says. ''But from the moment I intervened on behalf of the Lis, I could sense the government was receptive.'' A week after the brothers' release, Kamm and his wife had dinner with them in Hong Kong. ''There were still torture marks on them,'' Kamm says. ''They told me the day I got involved was the day their situation improved. I wept. That's when I started to think that I could talk to the Chinese about freeing prisoners, and they would do it.''

In September 1991, Kamm resigned from Occidental and began his own business so that he could devote more time to working on prisoner releases. Today he is almost entirely out of the business world. He lives in San Francisco, where he moved with his Hong Kong-born wife and two sons in 1995 and where he runs the foundation Dui Hua, or ''dialogue,'' on a budget of $300,000 a year. Dui Hua's financing comes mainly from the conservative Smith Richardson Foundation and the International Republican Institute, whose president was Lorne W. Craner, now the Bush administration's assistant secretary of state for democracy, human rights and labor.

Kamm travels to Hong Kong and China four times a year, gathering information on obscure political prisoners and presenting their names to government officials. He estimates that his involvement has been at least partly responsible for about 250 prisoners being released or being given better treatment in prison. No other person or organization in the world, including the State Department, has helped more Chinese prisoners.

America has a bipartisan policy toward democracy and human rights in China, and it is called trade. ''Trade freely with China and time is on our side,'' President Bush says, echoing President Clinton's promise to build ''peace through trade, investment and commerce.'' The accepted wisdom is that trade is not only good for human rights in China, but it is also enough -- that the exposure to American practices and the growth of a middle class that come from trade will eventually force China to democratize, or at least to become a less repressive dictatorship.

But American businesses are not quite the ambassadors of values we might want. Far from raising standards in China, many companies with Chinese factories producing goods for American consumers are engaged in a race to the bottom.

Hong Kong- and New York-based labor investigators have found factories producing brand-name toys, clothing and shoes for the American market where the average wage was 14 to 19 cents an hour and where, during peak production seasons, workers had to be on the job for 15 hours a day, seven days a week. In some factories, workers pay a deposit when they start their jobs or are not given their first month's pay, to keep them from leaving. Some must pay the factory so much for their meals and dorm beds that they end up owing their employers money. These practices are violations of Chinese law. And the rule of law is at the heart of human rights.

One reason for the disparity in what American corporations say and do is that they do not own their factories but subcontract with others to make products. In general, contractors win jobs by promising low prices, which promotes worker abuse. More important, the system provides a layer of insulation that allows American manufacturers to avoid responsibility for products that bear their brand name.

Just as pernicious is the behavior of American companies on matters outside their immediate purview. When China drafts new commercial laws, American businesses take a lively and vocal interest. When China jails bishops and censors the Internet, American executives say nothing -- or they echo the Communist Party line.

The Internet will be the test for business in the future. China makes it illegal to post or download subversive messages and asks Internet service providers and Internet cafes to police users. As of last year, sending material considered secret or reactionary is a capital crime, although so far people convicted of Internet-related crimes have received sentences of only two to four years. Human Rights Watch tried to get software companies to intervene after one Sichuan Web master, Huang Qi, was imprisoned in 2000 for posting human rights material. Human Rights Watch argued to companies that since they were promoting the Internet as a tool to change China, they could not keep silent when a Chinese citizen was jailed for doing exactly that. ''We failed miserably to get any company to say a word, privately or publicly,'' says Mike Jendrzejczyk, the Washington director of Human Rights Watch in Asia.

It's hard to dispute, on the one hand, that China's opening to the world in order to attract foreign investment has been positive for freedom. But the endorsement China's leadership receives from American executives is so damaging to the cause of human rights today that it undercuts the beneficial effects of engagement. ''Businesses act the way they think China wants them to,'' Kamm says. Last year, for example, Li Shaomin, an American citizen and seven-year employee of AT&T in New Jersey, was arrested by the Chinese government on spying charges as part of a campaign to intimidate ethnic Chinese academics abroad. AT&T declined to let Li's former boss, Salvatore Cordo, even collect employee signatures for a petition for his release. Cordo says that he was surprised and perplexed. ''I wasn't asking for a public statement -- I wasn't naïve,'' he says. ''But there was an absolute terror on the company's part to do a damn thing that could be even remotely interpreted as helpful.'' (In an e-mail message to Cordo, the company said, ''We appreciate your commitment to this cause, but we believe it is not appropriate for AT&T to take an active role in publicizing it'' and that the matter should ''be handled on a government-to-government basis.'')

Kamm's own experience has convinced him that businesses can speak out for human rights and, if they do it right, not put their profits at risk. In December, he met with the American Chamber of Commerce in Beijing to try to persuade it to press the Chinese government on human rights. ''I never had a single situation where the Chinese said to me or a salesman of mine, 'Cut it out or your business will suffer,''' he told the chamber. ''There is nothing but upside in intervening.''

Kamm's argument is both moral and practical: business executives should intervene because they are the ones who can get results. Executives can make the same plea that Amnesty International would make, but the Chinese hear it as coming not from a hated adversary but from friends with a common agenda. ''Kamm is very critical of our policies, but his approach is acceptable to us,'' Li Baodong, China's top human rights diplomat, told me in a meeting this winter. ''He loves China. He shows respect. He is constructive and realistic.''

I went to Beijing in December to watch Kamm work. One freezing morning, Kamm sat in an armchair in a first-floor reception room at the Supreme People's Court in Beijing across a small table from Liu Hehua, the director of the court's foreign affairs bureau. Kamm pulled a letter from his briefcase. ''My good friend Senator Hatch asked me to share this with you,'' he said. ''He told me he wanted to re-establish contact with his good friend President Xiao Yang,'' who is the supreme court president. ''He said, 'I haven't written in a long time, would you deliver a letter for me?'''

Liu looked skeptical, as well he should. ''What's the main idea?'' he asked.

''It's to congratulate China on joining the World Trade Organization,'' Kamm said. ''You know, we are very close friends. In fact, the senator calls me 'cousin.' His mother's family name is Kamm.'' He reminded Liu that Orrin Hatch is the ranking Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee. ''He says he hopes the supreme court can help me find information on cases.''

While Kamm and his staff can find information about arrests in official Chinese publications, the journals often do not report on the subsequent trials and sentences. So Kamm needed someone at the supreme court who could find out for him what happened to arrested prisoners. On his last visit to the court, three months earlier, Kamm asked for information on the case of Yu Rong, who was arrested in 1989 in Shanghai for printing and distributing 1,490 ''reactionary'' leaflets. The Shanghai police called the case the most important political case of its kind in the city's history and organized an extraordinary manhunt at a time when violent crime was soaring. But the supreme court official who had made inquiries for Kamm had been unable to find out the verdict or sentence. She might have called the wrong court. But it could also be that the information had simply disappeared -- or, perhaps, the prisoner had.

Now, sitting in the supreme court's reception room, Kamm said: ''As an American, I find this hard to understand. How is it no one can find the result?'' Kamm and Liu discussed the sentence Yu Rong might have received, and then Kamm, rather than pressing the matter, introduced into the conversation an offer of assistance. ''If you want me to find information on cases in the United States, I will help you,'' he said, indulging the Chinese tendency to counter American criticism of human rights violations with accusations of their own. Then, using a variant on a mantra repeated by every Chinese official I met, Kamm concluded, ''My foundation believes in dialogue based on equality and mutual respect, grounded in accurate information.''

It is safe to say that Kamm's meetings with Chinese officials bear no resemblance to those of most human rights advocates. He strokes. He drops names of Washington contacts cultivated largely for the purpose of dropping their names. Later in their meeting, Kamm offered Liu help in finding American senior judges and trade experts who might provide advice on solving international trade disputes. Kamm speaks not only Mandarin and Cantonese but also the language of the party, which is just as important.

Though he no longer spends much time in the business world, Kamm still considers himself a salesman. ''I manufacture and sell prisoner lists,'' he says. ''I know a sale is made when I hear about a release.''

Although Kamm's lists include some high-profile prisoners, he concentrates on those unknown outside China. Dui Hua employs researchers in Hong Kong, San Francisco and Paris who comb regional Chinese newspapers and police gazettes looking for reports on arrests or trials for political crimes. Kamm says that he has uncovered the names of more than 2,000 prisoners, 80 percent of them unknown in the West, and has presented about 450 of the names to Chinese authorities.

Although in many cases prisoners are released soon after Kamm brings up their cases, he rarely receives proof that it was his work that resulted in their freedom. He often doesn't even find out about releases until months afterward, when the family or the government -- whose information has been reliable -- lets him or someone else know of the outcome. ''They often are really at pains not to give the impression it had anything to do with me,'' he says. ''They can sit there with a perfectly straight face and say to me, 'This prisoner was released because his behavior has been very good.'''

It is not clear how many people China detains for political acts. In 2000, nearly 700 people were arrested for ''endangering state security'' (what used to be called counterrevolutionary offenses). This does not include people arrested for ''using a cult to sabotage implementation of the law,'' a category of detainees that is soaring because of the government's hysteria over the spiritual group Falun Gong. It also does not include those taken for political reasons but convicted of other things, like fraud. Nor does it take into account the large number (officially estimated at 230,000, though possibly much higher) who have been sentenced without trial to work in ''re-education through labor'' camps, many of whom are labor advocates or individuals who practice religion outside government-approved churches. Catholics, moreover, are often picked up and kept for long stretches of time -- sometimes years -- without being convicted of a specific crime. Su Zhimin, a Catholic bishop, has been held informally since October 1997.

China has used these laws not just to limit dissent but also to eliminate it. About 40 members of the China Democracy Party, a toothless group of a few hundred members writing essays mainly for one another, are known to be serving prison terms, some for more than 10 years. A labor advocate who distributed leaflets encouraging workers to form free unions got 15 years. Five leaders of an evangelical Christian group were sentenced to death in 1999. Tibetan and Uighur dissidents often get particularly long sentences. While many Chinese prisoners do not serve their full sentences, early release usually goes to those who confess their crimes and express remorse. Since very few dissidents believe they have committed crimes, they usually do not benefit from sentence reductions.

The Chinese officials I spoke with uniformly argued that not a single person in the prison system is being held for a political act -- they are all there for breaking the law. This is technically correct, of course, as lawbreaking is whatever the party says it is. What the Chinese call ''rule of law'' has nothing to do with the equal application of laws drafted by the public's legitimate representatives. The officials I met also maintained that if they did not arrest and imprison people for violating such vague laws as endangering state security, or if they let prisoners out before they finished their sentences, they would then themselves be violating the rule of law.

In this context, John Kamm's success has been surreal. Why would a totalitarian government let political prisoners out of jail simply because an American private citizen inquires about them?

One reason is that the Chinese respond to Kamm's detailed knowledge about prisoners -- he often knows more about a case than the Chinese officials he is seeing. The other reason is that Kamm, through tactical obsequiousness, has come to seem like a friend. Zhang Yijun, who was the first Chinese official Kamm ever contacted about prisoners, said that when Kamm first called him, he said his goal was to make China's progress better known in the West. Every Chinese official I spoke to described Kamm's motives this way: he was not focused on getting prisoners released; he was promoting United States-China understanding. They know perfectly well what Kamm wants, but working through him allows them to win international points without buckling to human rights groups or Washington human rights officials, whom they perceive as unremittingly hostile. ''Sometimes it's useful to strike a bargain with the United States government, but never do it under pressure,'' Zhang says. ''If it is done with foreign intervention, it's counterproductive -- people here can have a radical reaction. I'd rather release prisoners as a gift for a friend who comes to talk to me.''

There are officials inside China's bureaucracy who argue that the country would be more stable if it permitted peaceful dissent and allowed some independent civil society. But this is a very controversial position. Technically, information about people convicted of state security offenses is a state secret, and officials who reveal it without authorization are subject to prosecution. This is unlikely, but the Cultural Revolution was not so long ago that bureaucrats aren't first and foremost watching their own backs. ''If the government releases people who are violating the law, people can send a letter of complaint to the People's Congress,'' says Li Baodong, the human rights diplomat. ''You'd be in trouble. Nobody's looking for trouble.''

Until his December trip, officials would normally pass information to Kamm by saying, ''My secretary will now give you something.'' And then the official would leave the room while a piece of paper changed hands. Kamm took it as a sign of great progress that on this trip one official handed him a document directly.

Kamm's 25-plus years of dealing with the Chinese government have helped him understand how to use the servility and fear inside China's bureaucracy to persuade officials to intervene on behalf of prisoners without even realizing it. His request for information often results in a Beijing big shot's placing a phone call to a provincial justice official or a warden to ask for the facts, which is immediately taken as a sign that this prisoner has influential friends -- the key to all doors in China.

For example, last year Kamm provided the names of 50 prisoners to the State Department, which included them in a list it submitted to the Chinese before Secretary of State Colin Powell's visit in July. In October, Lorne Craner gave Kamm a detailed report based on the Chinese response. It was more information than they had ever released before. That night, at dinner in Washington, Kamm was exultant. ''They freed the Locust Man!'' he exclaimed, referring to an imprisoned robber who, after the Tiananmen Square massacre, distributed slogans criticizing the government on slips of paper that he tied to the legs of locusts. ''They freed this old Kazakh poet, Kajikhumar Shabdan! And Wei Shouzhong and Guo Yunqiao, two labor leaders!''

For Kamm, however, the list was only a starting point. He advised Craner to go over the information provided by the Chinese and see if anyone else was eligible for parole under Chinese law. He also suggested going back to the central government and asking very specific questions about any discrepancies, even those that might seem absolutely inconsequential to outsiders. ''It makes the central government go back to Hunan again,'' Kamm explains. ''And then the locals say: 'What's this? Why this interest in Peng Shi?'''

An error has occurred. Please try again later.

You are already subscribed to this email.

Kamm's methods have influenced the State Department. ''We've learned from his work,'' an American Embassy official in Beijing says. ''Be patient, do your homework, follow through.'' But Kamm also goes to Washington to amass a thick file of letters from officials that he then uses to convince the Chinese that making John Kamm happy is a way to make Washington happy. And it works. ''We look at these cases as connected to our bilateral relations,'' Li Baodong told me bluntly.

Kamm's relationship with Washington helped smooth out the last details for a major prisoner release earlier this year. Ngawang Choephel, a Tibetan ethnomusicologist, was 6 years into an 18-year sentence for espionage. Choephel had been arrested while in Tibet taping traditional music and dance. Because he had been a Fulbright scholar who taught at Middlebury College, many in the United States, particularly Vermont's Congressional delegation, had pressed the Chinese on his case. In October 1999, Senator James Jeffords received a letter from China's ambassador to Washington, Li Zhaoxing, stating that Choephel had been in poor health. ''We sent it to various people who know China,'' said Laurie Schultz Heim, a legislative assistant to Jeffords. ''It didn't mean anything to anyone. Only Kamm looked at it and said: 'This is the road map. This is how we get him out.' He was better than anyone at reading the tea leaves and coming up with a plan.''

During a meeting in Beijing in December, Li Baodong suggested to Kamm that China was getting ready for an important release, and he hinted that the prisoner in question was Choephel. He also said that there was resistance in the bureaucracy. Kamm decided to push him to give formal approval immediately, though he had to speak in the cryptic way the bureaucracy demands. ''I'll come back to see you tomorrow,'' Kamm said. ''Then you indicate to me if I can come back the day after tomorrow to discuss this.''

The next day, Kamm was nervous as we sat in the reception room of the enormous foreign ministry. Then, with a great flourish, in walked Li Zhaoxing -- now the vice foreign minister and probably China's next foreign minister -- who had written the letter about Choephel. He stayed only a minute and exchanged pleasantries, but Kamm had received the signal he was hoping for. Li Zhaoxing's welcoming presence, if only for a moment, meant that Kamm's concerns had been heard and that the release had been approved.

The next day, Kamm and Li Baodong hammered out the details: Washington would pay for the flight to the United States, the announcement would state that Choephel was getting medical parole, no one could keep Choephel from telling the press whatever he wanted. On Jan. 20, Choephel took a Northwest Airlines flight to Detroit, a free man.

Much about China's ''dialogue'' with Kamm, some human rights advocates point out, is really more like a hostage negotiation. Kamm is being used, they say, but he readily acknowledges this. ''What matters is what you are used for,'' he says. ''Should we not be trying to get people out of prison?''

Robin Munro, a London-based China researcher who has served as director of Human Rights Watch's Hong Kong office, says that wariness about Kamm goes back to his invoking human rights in the service of extending Most Favored Nation status. ''In his first few years, there was a lot of suspicion among rights groups,'' he says. ''He had twin tracks: lobbying and human rights work. But he went native on the human rights work, probably as a result of personal emotional experiences meeting former political prisoners.''

More seriously, critics have said that Kamm's interventions do little to change the system or prevent arrests in the first place. Some call what he does humanitarian work, not human rights work. ''It's important to help particular individuals to any degree you can,'' says Xiao Qiang, executive director of the New York-based group Human Rights in China. ''But human rights work in China should promote the legitimacy of human rights among the government and Chinese society. If someone is released but still cannot say the things that got him imprisoned to begin with, it's not much of an improvement. The Chinese government is manipulating this process. Not only do they not pay for their human rights violations; they have discovered they can trade information on political prisoners for a better image and access to the U.S. government. Their ability to arrest dissidents is strengthened, not weakened.''

Munro echoes this sentiment, though he also says that the cause benefits from various approaches. ''The job of human rights groups is to make the Chinese government hurt internationally for its abuses,'' he says. ''Kamm's job is to come in and say to the Chinese, 'Friends, here's how it can stop hurting.'''

Kamm's reception among human rights advocates is a warm one, however, compared with the ostracism offered him by the business community. In December, he met with members of the American Chamber of Commerce in China to ask for its support and ask it to work as a group to help political prisoners.

The reception echoed two previous AmCham China meetings. In 1983, George Shultz, then secretary of state, had lunch with American business executives, who repeatedly asked why Washington wasn't doing more to help them in China and complained that Japanese and German companies had an easier time getting licenses to export to China. To which Shultz replied, ''Why don't you move to Japan or Western Europe?''

Eleven years later, Clinton's secretary of state, Warren Christopher, came to the same group and heard a similar message. Businessmen complained bitterly about a Clinton executive order conditioning M.F.N. renewal on human rights progress. Christopher stood there and took the criticism meekly, and Clinton later retreated on M.F.N., severing the connection between trade preferences and human rights.

Timothy P. Stratford, the General Motors executive who was chairman of AmCham in 2000 and 2001, opened the meeting with Kamm by referring to the Shultz visit in 1983. ''I would say that AmCham is very different today,'' he said.

I didn't see it. Kamm began his presentation with a recitation of his business credentials and his work for prisoners. Then he asked for AmCham's help. Kamm's relationship with AmCham was not great, but I was surprised by the bluntness of their rejection. ''The majority of American corporations all around the world are not with you on the issue of working on specific cases,'' said Christian Murck, AmCham's incoming chairman.

''I've figured that out,'' Kamm replied.

The executives argued that they did maintain high standards in their own factories and that they publicly expressed American values. Stratford gave two examples of speaking out. He was one of two speakers at a conference last April, during the time when the crew of the downed American naval surveillance plane was being held by the Chinese government. Although G.M. was competing for a contract, Stratford said, ''I raised the incident and made it clear the problem had to be solved.''

Next he cited AmCham's activism when the National People's Congress was considering a new contract law, for which members of AmCham's legal committee volunteered their time to help write new draft legislation.

When Kamm asked for examples of intervention that did not include Americans or the self-interest of the chamber's members, Stratford said, ''If we speak out on broader issues, we lose credibility.''

Jim Gradoville, vice president of the Asia Pacific division of Motorola, China's largest foreign investor, seconded this notion. ''A company doesn't know what the facts are,'' he said. ''We concentrate on business.''

The next day, I went to see Clark T. Randt Jr., a lawyer who had been first vice president of Hong Kong AmCham when Kamm was president. Today, Randt, a fraternity brother of George W. Bush's at Yale, is the American ambassador in Beijing. Randt said that the chamber could speak out on human rights even if individual members felt they could not. ''Business in China is based on relationships,'' he said. ''To slap someone around on the shortcomings of the government may not be conducive to good commercial relations. But that's why this is a perfect role for the chamber. If the chamber takes a collective position, you can separate it from company A, B or C.''

When I asked Randt if he felt that businessmen could have an influence on nonbusiness subjects, he said: ''I think they could. When the U.S. government speaks, we are viewed as having our own national interests. If the Chinese heard from just 'the people' that something is out of step with international standards, really unacceptable, it would help make the point.'' I told him that the chamber members had said that it would be hard to get the consensus necessary to take a position and that they seemed disinclined to speak out. He was silent. ''It would be shameful if that were the case,'' he eventually said. ''The chamber should understandably have a commercial focus, but it's the perfect organization to do these things. We're Americans. The Chinese are not going to haul them all off to jail for having meetings like these poor fellows in house churches.''

The truth is, of course, that if companies wanted to become competent to make judgments and speak out on human rights, they could do so rather quickly. Or they could write John Kamm a check. But they don't.

A year ago, Kamm sent a letter asking for money to 100 companies that are members of both AmCham Hong Kong and the United States-China Business Council. ''Not a single company offered any kind of support -- moral or financial,'' he says, adding, ''I did get a couple of $100 checks from employees.'' Kamm says that a major energy company was thinking of making a donation and first asked the Chinese Embassy in Washington if China would have a problem. ''No problem,'' the answer came back a week later. But the company's Beijing headquarters shot it down. He has received a few corporate donations, from Reebok's Human Rights Foundation (which is separate from the corporation) and from Nike, as well as from a carpet-importing company whose owners are personal friends.

Even if corporations decide that they would be better off if China were more like Sweden, they can reap the benefits while risking nothing if they leave the heavy lifting to others. And rule of law is not to everyone's taste. A Korean entrepreneur told me that he was thrilled with the business climate in China. ''If you know the right guy, you can do anything,'' he marveled. It is good to be a foreign businessman in China. Businessmen live in a warm cocoon, protected from rubbing up against the problems of ordinary Chinese. It would probably be hard to find five businessmen in China who want to see labor advocates released from prison. In fact, the annual white paper that AmCham prepares advocates reductions in labor costs and more, not fewer, restrictions on labor rights.

There is, however, one particularly compelling reason for businesses to work for human rights: the government has picked up dozens of ethnic Chinese executives for foreign companies. In 1996, Xiu Yichun, a senior executive at Shell, was arrested on charges of obtaining state secrets. At the time, Shell was negotiating to build an oil refinery, and the ''state secrets'' probably related to the financing and environmental impact of the project. Xiu spent a year largely incommunicado before she was released.

Chinese officials argue that never in history has their nation been freer and more prosperous, and they are certainly right. The transformation since Mao's death is astonishing. From 1978 to 1996, China grew at the rate of 10 percent a year -- and only slightly slower after that -- growth that has helped lift 200 million people out of poverty.

Politically, the changes have been less striking, but nevertheless significant. Before Deng Xiaoping's reforms, the party told Chinese citizens where to live and work. There was little opportunity for travel or study abroad. There was no modern legal system at all, no check on arbitrary Communist Party power.

It is not clear if China's short-term future is one of further liberalization or more controls. For every Taiwan and South Korea, where trade and economic growth led to democratization, there are examples where it didn't -- Japan and Germany early in the last century, Singapore today. When trade has helped, it has done so by creating a middle class that eventually rebelled against state controls. China has a booming middle class, but one that is unlikely to revolt. Because business is so intertwined with the state, the private sector is dependent on government officials, or it is actually made up of government officials and their cronies.

Rebellion, in addition, cannot happen in a vacuum. ''Taiwan had decades of civil movements,'' says Xiao Qiang of Human Rights in China. ''China never allowed any organized dissent. For openness to automatically lead to democracy, you need people, civil organizations, grass-roots forces to do it. In China, the government has cracked down so hard that it's impossible.'' And the government is now more repressive of speech than it was during the mid-1980's, stifling dissent precisely to make sure that in a time of great economic upheaval discontent does not lead to political change.

International business has contributed to China's modernization. China's desire for trade has encouraged the leadership to allow thousands of young people to study abroad, in itself an important liberalizing influence. It has promoted legal reform, although more in the commercial area than elsewhere.

But business has also exerted a backward pull. The allure of money in China has discouraged world criticism that could have been a force for more democracy. China is quite open about rewarding foreign countries for shutting up. In 1997, a month after France helped to stop a resolution censuring China at a meeting of the United Nations Commission on Human Rights in Geneva, China awarded Airbus Industrie a $1.5 billion contract to sell planes to China, making it quite clear that it was because of France's action at the United Nations.

Whether China rewards and punishes businesses in a similar fashion, business executives certainly operate as if it does. As a result, American executives in China today are not exporting American values. Rather, they have absorbed those of the Chinese Communist Party, praising repressive leaders and endorsing, through silence or worse, their methods.

Trade can better help to reform China if American executives reform first. Corporate executives in China could start with their own factories, enforcing the law, paying benefits like health insurance and workers' compensation, protecting employees against government abuse and, as Reebok has done in one factory, encouraging workers to elect their union representatives rather than accept those of the party. Outside their factory gates, American executives could use the skills they have employed to improve China's commercial codes to lobby for the rule of law and human rights. Even if they were unsuccessful, they would at least be demonstrating to Chinese officials that even friends find certain practices repugnant.

And Kamm says that corporations should not just speak the rhetoric of human rights or even settle for promoting democratic practices by example; they should be engaged in the practical work of prisoner releases. Because American businesses are scattered over parts of China where diplomats do not set foot, Kamm would like to see them contribute by collecting public information on prisoners' trials and by working for their release. ''I want them to realize that the things I do, drawing up and presenting lists, is not threatening, and in fact they can make a big difference in the lives of the Chinese people,'' he says. ''I was a vice president of a corporation that had 50 vice presidents. I was no big deal. Think for a minute of what the chairman of the board or vice chairman or president could do.''

He goes on now, more impassioned. ''The human rights community built a movement,'' he says. ''If the head of China for Amnesty quits and opens a bakery, there are others to fill his or her shoes. What do I have? Relationships with N.G.O.'s and this bizarre relationship with the Chinese government.''

But that bizarre relationship is one that he insists can, should, be exploited by others, and the resistance of those others to follow even for a moment in his footsteps is baffling and infuriating to him. He recently wrote a letter to a businessman friend asking why he could get nowhere with corporations. ''I'm one of you,'' he said. ''I was one of the first to defend the trade relationship. So how can I reach the business community? Why this spectacular failure?''

Correction: March 3, 2002

An article on Page 58 of The Times Magazine today about John Kamm, an American businessman who helps negotiate the release of political prisoners in China, refers imprecisely to the title of Jim Gradoville, who commented on the involvement of American businesses in human rights issues in China. He is regional vice president of Motorola for Asia-Pacific government relations, not vice president of Motorola Asia Pacific.

We are continually improving the quality of our text archives. Please send feedback, error reports,
and suggestions to archive_feedback@nytimes.com.

A version of this article appears in print on March 3, 2002, on Page 6006058 of the National edition with the headline: John Kamm's Third Way. Today's Paper|Subscribe